Several are included in San Francisco’s ongoing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Plan, most recently updated for Fiscal Year 2020-2024, which Matthias Jaime, director of the Committee on Information Technology (COIT), told Techwire is in roughly its fifth iteration and helps leaders identify and prioritize large projects and their funding streams. Among the takeaways:
• In an RFP issued Jan. 3, the city-county seeks a contractor to “provide satellite communication services for voice, text/SMS, and data/internet services” to the city. The document, the city said, “is intended to establish a Master Agreement(s) for the purchase of Satellite Airtime Services offered by a selected” contractor or contractors.
Service levels vary among the city’s roughly 65 departments, some of which are outside its geographic limits or in remote areas with limited or non-existent cell service. Currently, many departments use “satellite communications devices and satellite bandwidth services for purposes including for phone access” where cell access is not available, “to maintain and test back-up communication systems” and in emergency response operations, according to the RFP.
The non-exclusive contract will be for three years with the city-county option of two one-year extensions. Proposals are due by 1 p.m. PST on Jan. 31.
• Techwire bid notices show San Francisco is in dev-ops on initiatives including a job portal at its Office of Economic and Workforce Development; digitization and document management at its permit center, as requested by the Fire Department; a new asset tracking system at the Department of Elections; public Wi-Fi in the car rental center at San Francisco International Airport; and replacement of the business tax system at the Treasurer-Tax Collector’s Office. Generally, all these projects are in active development, Jaime told Techwire.
Current numbers call for costs of $1.4 million for the jobs portal; $700,000 for the digitization and document management project; $300,000 for the asset tracking system; $1.7 million for the public Wi-Fi; and $15 million for the business tax system. However, these are expected to change with new budget projections in May.
• Architecture for the jobs portal, Jaime said, should be inspired by San Francisco’s housing portal, which is up and running and has generated considerable interest from other agencies. Long Beach, he said, made use of code from the housing portal; and San Mateo and Alameda counties and the city of San Jose have expanded on it.
“This is actually unifying different housing affordability options and making this more of a regional platform. Which is really exciting, exactly the kind of thing that we were trying to push for,” Jaime said of the latter three agencies.
• The city-county is also in dev-ops on a security incident event management (SIEM) service, in a project spearheaded by its Department of Technology and estimated to cost $400,000. The strategic objective is to increase the city’s disaster preparedness and resilience, while ensuring redundancy and failover of critical systems in a crisis. The ICT plan describes what’s needed as a “third-party solution to provide advanced threat protection,” with around-the-clock rules-based processing that includes monitoring, incident investigations and threat validation.
“SIEM is really a way to take it to the next level to leverage the expertise of other organizations and consulting firms that have a much wider viewpoint. It’s one piece of a much larger strategy that we have with the cybersecurity team,” Jaime said.
